Profit, not politics, is what matters in Tencent’s Reddit stake

As initially reported last week on Feb. 11, Reddit confirmed a Series D funding round led by $150 million from Tencent, placing the company at a $3 billion post-money valuation.

The influx of cash will likely allow the online discussion platform, long billed as the “front page of the internet,” to further scale up and compete for ad dollars with the likes of Facebook and Twitter.

What would be, under other circumstances, a fairly standard deal has quickly become a hot-button issue. Fears of Chinese-style censorship are overblown—but business needs may push Reddit away from its legacy “anything goes” content model nonetheless.

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